Category: Politics & Economics

Politics & Economics

The Calm Before the Storm?

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

The President Donald Trump era appears to be circling the drain. What an utterly unglued five years this has been in American political and popular society. Trump’s enemies, at least in the press, seem to think that his apparent impending departure from public office will mark his removal from the public scene, or at least from public influence. I do not think they could be more wrong (as usual). Setting aside the increasingly far-fetched possibility that Trump may yet pull out a victory via legal challenges to Democrat Party election shenanigans, the fa...

Politics & Economics

A Belated Clarification

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Circumstances compel me to issue a clarification to a notion rendered in my last entry, from late December, lamenting the re-election of Barack Obama. My expressing a similar idea in a conversation prompted a sharp rebuttal that I was (wrongly and uncharitably) entertaining a conceit that everyone who voted to re-elect Obama did so either for trivial reasons, or out of naked self-interest. It is not true that I believe that, but I can understand how someone could come to that conclusion, given the cynical tone of my harangue. I made two offending comment...

Politics & Economics

In Case You Need to Know How to Vote on Tuesday…

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

The coveted MaybeToday.org Election 2012 endorsements and voting guidelines are here at last. Readers will certainly want to use these statements to inform their own decision-making prior to the upcoming election. For example, any of my neighbors in Precinct 8 of lovely Natick Massachusetts could print out this post and take it with them to the Morse Room in the Morse Institute Library next Tuesday, for use as instructions on precisely how to cast one’s votes (I think that would be legal, but I have to admit I’m not sure – please check with the voting of...

Politics & Economics

So what the blank could possibly go wrong?

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

[Video] Quote of the Day for Friday, September 28, 2012. Illinois State Senate candidate Barbara Bellar putting some context around the Affordable Care Act: As funny as this is, Bellar is actually soft-balling the problem of the plan’s utter lack of attention to the need for doctors to provide the expanded government-mandated care, what with stories floating around like 83 percent of doctors have considered quitting over Obamacare. And it’s not just sheer numbers, but also the fact that ObamaCare doubles-down on the screw-turning inflicted upon general p...

Politics & Economics

The myth of a democratic socialist society funded by capitalism is finished

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Quote of the Day for Thursday, September 6th, 2012: Janet Daley, in The Telegraph, explaining to her fellow Britons why “We should tune in to the Romney and Ryan show”: What is being challenged is nothing less than the most basic premise of the politics of the centre ground: that you can have free market economics and a democratic socialist welfare system at the same time. The magic formula in which the wealth produced by the market economy is redistributed by the state – from those who produce it to those whom the government believes deserve it – has go...

Politics & Economics

The Communist Party was my Nurse Ratched

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Movie Director (e.g. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”) and Czechoslovakian expatriate Milos Forman had an op-ed in the NY Times last week, using his experiences under communism as a context for criticizing the use of the term “socialist” to describe President Obama: The Communist Party was my Nurse Ratched, telling me what I could and could not do; what I was or was not allowed to say; where I was and was not allowed to go; even who I was and was not. Now, years later, I hear the word “socialist” being tossed around by the likes of Rick Perry, Newt Ging...

Politics & Economics

Initial Thoughts on Reactions to Fast & Furious and Obamacare Developments

Posted on by John W Gillis / 0 Comment

Very interesting day in the political world, with the Supreme Court handing down its judgment on Obamacare, and Congress finding Attorney General Holder in contempt of Congress for his evasive shenanigans trying to cover up the background to the “Fast & Furious” program – the first sitting US Attorney General to receive such an honor. How now to prosecute him becomes quite a conundrum, since the department he runs is responsible for such prosecutions, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Neither finding is very surprising to me (the first admittedly more...

Politics & Economics

“The family is at the center of Santorum’s economic vision”

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Quote of the Day for Wednesday, January 4th, 2012: James Pethokoukis writing earlier today at the American Enterprise Institute’s Enterprise Blog, in an article called: Santorum vs. Romney is a conflict of conservative visions: I don’t think Santorum believes tax reform is unimportant. True, throughout his Iowa campaign, Santorum has, in the words of David Brooks, been “picking fights” with supply-siders. Yet Santorum wants to sharply cut tax rates on labor income, capital income, and corporate profits. Nor does Santorum think cutting the size of governm...

Politics & Economics

The go-to tool for a go-to method of simply killing as many jihadis as possible

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Quote of the Day for Tuesday, September 27th, 2011:   J.E. Dyer, posting over at HotAir’s Green Room, on the implications of the increasing and expanding reliance of the United States’ military efforts in the Middle East on assassination via drone strike: To use this kind of force, the implication is that you don’t need to have a traditional-warfare justification.  Alternatively, you could say that this kind of force – drone-targeting; anti-personnel tactics untethered to the idea of securing a “better peace” – is now a way war can be defined. ...

Politics & Economics

She delivered a devastating indictment of the entire U.S. political establishment

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Quote of the Day for Friday, September 9th, 2011: Anand Giridharadas, writing in the NY Times on Sarah Palin’s speech at a TEA Party event in Iowa last week: Let us begin by confessing that, if Sarah Palin surfaced to say something intelligent and wise and fresh about the present American condition, many of us would fail to hear it. That is not how we’re primed to see Ms. Palin. A pugnacious Tea Partyer? Sure. A woman of the people? Yup. A Mama Grizzly? You betcha. But something curious happened when Ms. Palin strode onto the stage last weekend at a Tea ...